


Look death in the Eye

by verywhale



Category: Darkest Dungeon (Video Game)
Genre: Death Experiences, Eldritch Abominations, Eye Trauma, Flashbacks, Gen, Koala's Creature Collection mod, Modded content spoilers, cosmic horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:41:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23014183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verywhale/pseuds/verywhale
Summary: The Ruins hide inside a host for a strange ritual, described on a single page torn out of an eldritch tome. It tells about an observer from an outer space, a thing of myriads of eyes which stalks all living forms on Earth, looking for a new perfect pair of pieces for its collection.Junia knows the host is right in front of her, and the page is genuine, and the ritual must work. She knows that she must stop and listen to the warnings of her friends. But she burns the page.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	1. The Plunderer

**Author's Note:**

> If you are familiar with Steam Workshop for this game, you might've seen the mod under the name Koala's Creature Collection. I'm one of the coders behind this mod :D
> 
> One of unexpected frustrations I had while working on it was that the space for journal entries in the game itself was way too small, and I constantly had to cut off good chunks of text I and the other writer had made. So this FF (and a few more incoming) is some sort of escape from this limited format of journal pages. It was written a few months in advance before this whole quarantine thing. Hope you enjoy it.

Audrey has always seen lucid dreams. Enjoying wine and gossip with fishmen and armored bones in her family’s ruined residence. Ripping the throats of her teammates who have mistaken her for one of these long-nosed, rotten creatures wearing wigs and wings and blood-soaked frills. Throwing knives at the statue of the founder of their benevolent Hamlet, now soft like butter and squeaking in pain each time the knife missed—and it missed a lot, to her disapproval. Be it the night around the fire in the diseased woods, or on the berth in their sweaty shared barracks—the dreams have always been the same. Her fluttering shadow self has always jumped out of the mud and slop and corpse piles of reality and landed in the dreamscape—even if it’s had the same mud and slop and even more grotesque corpses in even higher piles. She has learned there’s hardly any difference between all nonsense spawning around in both of these worlds. It helps her to stand her ground both at day and at night, always stay in charge of herself.

Tonight, Audrey is dreaming with her eyes wide open, lying on dead stone of once prodigious manor. She stands on her knees, bleary and quivery like her gaze. The walls have collapsed, and there are only faded skies around, tinted in strange hateful mauve. Dozens and dozens of eyes are drilling her weakened body, and she can’t figure out who they belong to.

Audrey clenches her teeth and tears out a thorn from her shoulder, one of many now planted in her. It’s white like a bone and cold like a blade, and it rejects her blood, flowing down from its tip until it’s perfectly clean. Her throat is worn out from yells and gasps, but her heart is still twinging at every alien sight. Her fingers cannot hold the thorn any longer.

She dares to look up, although it doesn’t grant her any relief, or more comprehension. A flying flower doesn’t make sense. A flying flower with an eye on its stamen doesn’t make sense. A flying flower with an eye on its stamen, shooting its brambles and gazing into her heart until she cannot feel it beating, but can feel it breaching, aching nothing like a wound from a blade or a bullet—doesn’t make any sense.

Yet she sees two of them. Fleeting, waiting for her, mindlessly watching as she frees herself from all their prickles. Her sobbing wounds are miniscule, but they can sob for as long as it will take them to drain her whole. Thin bloodtrails on her coat and skin intertwine like the most delicate lace. She still holds her right hand curved as if her melee knife hasn’t been lost in the nullity when her attack has been reflected. They could reach her even in the shadows she’s cast on herself; and evading from one of these things has meant to stumble over another. With every sting and every new wound comes a new regret. She’s given up on slapping and shaking herself—nothing can bring her out of this nightmare.

They are waiting. Whatever these things are, what ghastly garden they have bloomed in—they can’t take their glare off her, and they stay still as if _they_ are the helpless and the hopeless. And behind them is only the vast nothingness—but it squirms and breathes and gulps and swallows, and it sees her.

Audrey looks around, peeks in the gap of her pouch. The knives are gone, the last of them now sticking in one of their pellets. The darts, she’s left them home after a long annoying persuasion from Junia and Sarmenti. Tardif didn’t care—as always. What was the matter for him was his axe and hook and flashbombs, and now they are also gone along with him. She freezes, trapped in this needless thought—it is _her_ life she must be thinking about—and it drops her back where she’s been lying. The stone’s shape under her is weird, but it’s none of the creatures’ vile games, for once. It’s her pickaxe, steady, quick, infallible—

She grabs the pick and leaps on her last breath, and shoves it into the pupil of the thing which has been the closest to her. She could’ve sworn they’ve kept their distance and never moved since they’ve downed her once. It pops and falls apart, pellets both fleshy and ghostly now resting on the floor. They can bleed like her, and what they bleed is sizzling, evaporating right after it flays the skin. She has no more voice to cry. It must leave deep scars. They must never open her casket.

The parts of what has been recently flying are now consumed by that force in the dark. The space shrivels, jams Audrey in its unexplainable chill, puts her in a spot more narrow and sinister than any coffin she’s broken in. The walls have eyes, and they have chosen her as a target. She screams, but this voice isn’t hers and this language has never appeared on the pages of books in her library. Her body is dropped again. For the first time of today, she perfectly knows what to wait for, but it doesn’t ease the pain and doesn’t lift the dread. Her limbs tremble, her face turns wet—less from this torture and more from embarrassment, from her disgrace which has led to this turn of events. It’s not what she is supposed to feel now, but it’s not what she can control. It’s not a dream.

The last thing she breathes is pollen, toxic for her and uplifting for foes. The last thing she hears is her pickaxe loudly clinging as it’s being tossed at the manor walls, away from her sight. And the last thing she sees is a pair of giant misshapen extremities, slimy and strangely luminous alone in the dark, extruding inside her eyesockets. The links break, dead gasp escapes the husk, the bunker with treasures unseen and unknown. The jewels are found and looted; they gleam and await for a new life destined for them. The colossal being wraps its appendages around its precious findings and lets its lesser children free, allows them to swarm and devour Audrey’s blinded remains.


	2. The Fool

Many have fallen for Sarmenti’s shows—and during Sarmenti’s shows. What can a single clown do? Frail, pathetic, built like a giant puppet; juggling his daggers while _attempting_ to dance—a bare child from the street can do the same for free. Tangled in his own garb, tripping on the tips of his own slippers; he falls and the daggers pin him by his hat to the floor. And everybody’s laughing. Isn’t it what a clown wants, to make everyone laugh? To see his audience smile and cheer and throw stubs and junk at their entertainer?

And they keep laughing when one of the knives sticks out of some lady’s swollen neck; and more get shoved into those spots that make them laugh even harder. For some it’s their bellies, for others, their backs; one honorable man has been howling senseless, begging him to cut each of his fingers. Some fools are so joyous that they start choking and crying and their laughter loses its voice, becomes no more than prolonged silent gasps.

And Sarmenti makes sure everyone enjoys the show. Nobody must stay unsatisfied; and he will seek through the crowd, prowl and observe every corner, not to miss out any bored or saddened face. He sees the curtains shiver, boxes of equipment suddenly getting more cluttered, and his eyes glint with a flare of objection, akin to the edge of his knife. If simple tricks don’t amuse these hapless souls, he will unleash his ultimate performance, made just for them; the extreme dedication to his art which leaves him worn out until the next big show. No one will leave unhappy.

Frail, pathetic. Insects of excessive size? Abandoned carrion that has fallen into the hands of some mad magician and been granted a new life? All these descriptions are vain, fitting only to write a silly song to cheer people up at the campfire—if there’s anyone still left to make a fireplace. Are they even worth to write songs about? Sarmenti would rather leave such witless jests to Dismas—this one performs for those who still lose their breaths at ancient stunts of dropping his drunken face in a cake or in mud. _His_ jokes must stay sharp, must stay in line.

He swings his sickle, and two things he dares to define either as tails or skinny claws are now squirming on the stone floor, drabbling it with alien blood. He quickly jumps further away before the splatter reaches him. He’s seen how it sears the skin and cloth and even metal alike.

These chunks of flesh, sustaining themselves on some primal hatred of an even higher being, seem to be not worth illustrating, neither with a word nor with a brush. Their shapes are unstable, their existence is limited, destined to deform even further under the will of their creator. They rarely fight back. They are easy to ignore, not to be taken seriously.

But Sarmenti learned how obtuse his friends were when they let this idea slip into their heads. Out of their hideous kin, they are the most patient. They don’t show off, they know their place and how their foes observe them, and what they will never expect. Their hidden strength is built on one’s foolishness, on each swing of an axe and throw of a knife which could be assigned for them but have been turned on something else. When their older brothers pierce the hearts of their victims with their deadly gaze, drive them to the edge, it’s the smaller ones who make the final push—right into the abyss from which one can never come back. No shields or cloaks can hide one from their sight, not curious, not even hateful—just senseless ghostly glare of strange spawns from beyond.

Sarmenti slides forward, through the blood and regrets of his allies; the string is hit, the strident tune is now reflecting from what used to be the walls of the mansion; their attention is drawn. All eyes are now fixed on him and they crave his pain. But their aim is less presentable than he could expect, as he gracefully dances away from their wicked intents. Watching them fly into the wrong direction, still hungry and luckless, strangely stings him in the lungs and the bends of his limbs, makes him increase the tempo of his jitter, add another voice to his choir. Even the greater thing which has put their minds and surroundings into that bewildering mist, cannot yet focus its sight on Sarmenti. He’s still laughing, jumping, clapping his palms over his knees. His dirk has its own jig, and it slays one more of these little blind beasts still trying to catch him. If his shrill, daunting, echoing laughter has always driven people to their nerves, is there something it can drive these abominations to?

But while he keeps fooling around, the grave darkness itself comes close; the old tune bothers it no longer. It stares into his soul, flows in and fills his fragile body with voices from nowhere. He gulps, grabs his throat. The cries from outside resound in his head—the cries of his public, of poor bystanders, his own cries under the mask of forged bliss. Junia cried, too, when the flawed figure from the eldritch page had caught her sight. Hope slowly slips and is about to crash.

And then comes his final act, the last dance so carefully rehearsed, the last song to end this farce which is the world. Its honed sound becomes tangible, sharp like a spear, impaling two partners together. He holds his head down, doesn’t dare to face his opponent—or let it see the strain stepping out even through the mask. Neither can it see Sarmenti’s heart bleed or his skull crack into pieces when his devotion downs and pins him to the floor, accompanied by restless, vigorous applause.

Or so it appears to him when he’s still lying delirious under the shadow. These shrieks and cheers and weeps must be Junia’s, and hers alone. And those bites and sears and tears still must belong to the servants of the dreamworld which have never taken their stares off him. It stands impaired, sunlight peeking through its wounds, but stands nonetheless. It didn’t enjoy the show.

Blinded by misery and perching defeat, Sarmenti tears his mask off. He watches the monster cater to its child, reward it for having his soul torn down and burned and scattered. And no longer careful of his worthless life, Sarmenti finds the strength to slice them both while they expose themselves, to let them bleed out at last. The prickle gashes his face, from the corner of the mouth right to the ear. They rarely fight back, but when they do, they make you look back at your recklessness.

But he’s not allowed to die like this, with a new crooked smile and tears freezing as he stares at the towering doom, spreading its odious limbs towards him. The treasure is the most valuable when it still contains its holder’s life, with all its fears and wishes and pictures of better scenarios. What could’ve happened if they had kept their hands off the forbidden things?

It writhes and growls as it dives inside, squirms when it tears the eyeballs off and hears the true finale of this symphony—hoarse, raucous, throttled with his own blood. Yet the last thing Sarmenti’s eyes caught was the sight of the being’s own dying frame. At last, he’s thankful for the dance they had shared.


	3. The Mercenary

There are many ways to do Tardif’s job. Most are satisfied with leaving a bolt or a bullet in their target’s nape, when they don’t even suspect that someone has followed them through their escape. He heard of one old man who took pride in bringing the dregs onto the gallows, even if his own life was put on a stake by such honor. He also heard that the same man himself had been hanging three days and four nights until stray dogs and stray prowlers had left his foul corpse stripped, eyes popped out, flayed skin shaking in the wind. A violent crime against a child, it’d been said.

Tardif, however, enjoys when his target has to look back, to shiver and question their way as he silently follows. They may change the route, disrupt their plans and break their connections on the basis of their paranoia—and Tardif always watches them do it. He wants them to talk of the man noiseless and swift like an owl, look out for every sign of his presence, only to bump into him when they finally think themselves safe. It’s usually a bar, a hostel known for tight security—ha!—or some other seemingly useful shelter, often crowded. They often think he wouldn’t attempt to step out in public. If they have minions waiting in the corners, Tardif has some gifts for them too—hooks, bombs, or just a fist in the jaw; the choice is abundant.

He wants the felon to see clearly who stands in front of them and what fate he has prepared for them. He wants to see rage, regret and anguish on their sweaty faces, in their beady eyes; he wants them to feel the strike of justice—and know _who_ has cast it—as he tears off their rotten teeth. He would even smirk under the mask—but there’s no need to let them know. There’s also no need to feed the wicked instincts of victims’ hopeless relatives, or quench the authorities’ thirst for excessive power. The note and proof of death is enough for them. For Tardif, the job would never be as worthy if he alone weren’t to beat the justice right into the minds and bodies of that scum.

Today Tardif has looked around a lot. Since his arrival to the Hamlet, he couldn’t leave the sense of being watched, of someone peering and staring, and hiding once he turns his head. But who would possibly know of his coming to this forsaken place? To the others, he explained it as mere attentiveness, usual and crucial for his kind of job. To himself—in even lower tone so it couldn’t possibly be heard even behind his visor—he skimmed through many possible variants and identities, but didn’t find anything fitting.

An ugly figure at the back of the room, a mess of body parts stitched together in wrong places, holds a single eye in its hand. It’s coiling around and looking for someone the most vulnerable, for someone to stalk after the death of its host. Tardif has damned this expedition once and twice and dozen times when their looks have met, and when he has sensed the stench of burning paper and something acidic therewith. He’s been always avoiding the meeting with the unexplainable—he is a simple man, his mind is preoccupied with earthly things like ale and coin and toothless crowns in his bag. There’s no use, no place for something no one can wrap their heads around. But he’s for once afraid that this contact is inevitable.

The room itself is now living, squirming; it opens its eyes and Tardif’s head spins as he’s reminded of the same old feeling. He glances at Junia, tears running down her cheeks; her god doesn’t have an answer to the questions strangling him. It gives birth to new, lesser things; reshapes, remakes them into higher forms. They become the caricatures of real mundane beings, in all wrong colors and motions, wrong attributes stolen from banal creatures of Earth; and Tardif’s brain gets hot and images in front of him blur and lose their sense—if they ever had any. He lifts his axe, but it hits a target not assigned for it; its brambles tear Tardif’s sleeve and let his blood spill.

He would say that one of these has looked like a frog, but no frog he’s seen before would hold its single evil eye in its mouth—leave alone the claws and other things that shouldn’t be there. A second ago it’s been around, and the next it brings its shields of arms to the whole swallowing darkness—and it swings shut, returns to its inherent realm while still keeping a close watch on its playthings. That mimicry disappears, too, but the choir of the battle continues. Just as before, Tardif can’t see who’s following his every step and thought, but knows that he’s not alone. The pupils stretch, extend themselves into the copies of hands. They point at the spot where Tardif is standing, axe close to his chest, knees visibly shaking. Someone cries for him. But he doesn’t reply; he still keeps the mental picture of being collected and prepared for everything—however fractured and obviously fake.

Dozens of misshapen tongues, misshapen fangs, glowing white and fading back into black, flash in front of his eyes. He squints, he drops the bomb from his hand—but it cannot be any more blinding than the vision that has laid his fears bare. There’s another thing just like the one which has hopped into the chasm of dreams—its perfect, unsettling copy. It grapples him, tears his chest open and throws him from one nightmare into another, where the pain is as profound as it’s in reality. The blood from his cuts, from his gaps, from his eyes; it drips like sweat, it’s thick like tar, it hisses and bubbles and drowns this place. For once, his scream is heard.

His hopeless rage, his pointless regrets and shameful anguish; all is being patiently watched as it reflects in his eyes. The thing sees everything; no masks are a barrier to it. Junia, that mindless profligate; she offers him her help now, hands him her ludicrous prayers and majicks. Sarmenti and Audrey—two-faced fools, thinking their crimes can be swept aside—beg him to accept her aid. He brushes them all away and lets that unfathomable force free him from false useless visions, as it burrows through his helmet and tears his eyes off and devours them.


	4. The Sister

The Ruins hide inside a host for a strange ritual, described on a single page torn out of an eldritch tome. It tells about an observer from an outer space, a thing of myriads of eyes which stalks all living forms on Earth, looking for a new perfect pair of pieces for its collection.

Junia knows the host is right in front of her, and the page is genuine, and the ritual must work. She knows that she must stop and listen to the warnings of her friends. But she burns the page.

The flow of the time takes a pause. Audrey aims for this crippled thing at the back, but she cannot catch it with her eye; it slides and runs away from her sight although she is sure it still stands right there. Sarmenti is clutching his head, wailing uncontrollably. Even Tardif feels uneasy. Good for him— _and for them all_ —that they cannot see each hair on his body rise slowly as he watches the great beast unveil itself.

The chunks of flesh and fractured bones and pieces of wood, nailed on the back of the vessel, fall down and surge again. The new shape they take is, however, no more understandable or less blood-curdling than it’s already been; for all that Junia can clearly feel is the ancient malice oozing from the eyes it’s been concentrating on their trembling selves, feeble containers for treasures. Her fingers get hot and shaky and slippery under the gloves. She almost drops her versebook, all scribbles in it have become now meaningless. The air changes its shade, it’s now dense and hazy and Junia holds her breath.

She screamed the first time she had left the barracks, at the sight of walking bones and brawlers aiming their claws into Dismas’ heart. She screamed at the stench of disease and manure that the tunnels carried through their entirety, multiplying, amassing with every ill-bred corpse she and her fellows had left behind. Those days, she’d made herself a second sleeping place in the confession booth, where she would’ve cried her eyes out to a nonchalant priest. She would’ve confessed her fear, her weakness in front of the rejects of the Light, and her doubt of the Light’s control and power over things. _But if the Light is the creator of all, these monsters could possibly not walk our Earth. But if the Light is all-seeing and almighty, it must burn these fiends in its incandescence and blow their ashes into the depths of the seas beyond human reach. But if the Light truly loves each of its children, it could not make us meet these evil things and risk our precious lives against them._

Many prayers and purgations later, she would clear her mind of misgivings. Such is the test of our faith, she would say, and repeat it to all fresher warriors from the stagecoach. Those without belief, they rather liked the word “strength”. They wanted to top the creations of the Light, however amiss and mutated, to prove the dominance of mankind, of their tribes, gangs, cults or families. Junia still didn’t like thinking of these misguided fools, of temptation they conveyed in each of their yelps. But she had turned to herself, and then to the Light, who she knew to be watching every her step. She was still alive. She still had this gift from the skies, which let her eat and breath and walk and fight, and she had to protect it with all faith, radiating from her heart. Her doubts were forgiven. Her mistakes were forgotten. She could continue to carry the holy torch and prove herself to the Light as it was sending the tests for her to pass. As long as she’s believing, the Light would watch over her.

But no Light is watching over today. The murk is so arduous, nothing stands out apart from flickering pupils. They are elongated and weird and there’s too many of them. What towers above her now doesn’t resemble anything she has ever seen, or read about; and she’s not sure if she wants to learn what it is. She knows it’s large. She knows it has its eyelids still closed. She doesn’t see her friends, or her foes, or even the walls of the room which she has damned once she’s brought the torch to the page. All is lost in this murk.

Many eyes have opened to behold her poor friends, to down them in agony beyond the words they could express it with. She has cast her spells, has sent the prayers for their renewal, but it is never, never enough, and they don’t patch the souls. But this one eye, drawing near in silence; it’s not like the others. Nobody could move in its presence, unless someone is willing to yield themselves, even if just for a moment. But Audrey is not heroic. Tardif is not sacrificial. Sarmenti can always be both, but it’s not the way he wants to go.

And so Junia steps out, chattering graces and teary pleas to the beings out of her perception. It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t burn her skull from inside and doesn’t shed a drop of her blood. It sucks in her consciousness, her volition and any sort of mobility, and she has no memories of what’s been occurring. One blink, and she’s back in reality where screams come out distorted and slurred and images blur into one purple void. Her friends tell her something. They shake her. They yell right into her ears. But she’s remote from them all, and there mustn’t be any creature or creation to save them. But she’s been so faithful, so obedient; she has prayed every night, she has slain many fiends, she has deserved to live!—

And then it has vanished along with the dim veiling the field of their battle. Junia falls on her knees, mace forgotten, versebook abandoned, hands covering her reddened face. No thing or residue of alien origin has been left around, and neither has any trace of anyone who has been with her prior to this fight. Or so she has thought, until she has looked behind, panting and panically wishing she’d left everything behind and escaped this hell and this Hamlet forever.

Three priceless gifts have been resting besides; three bloodied trinkets, exquisite eyeballs—one hooked, one skewered on a knife, and one attached to a broken fingerboard.


End file.
